User interface (UI) is often one of the most important parts of a computer program because it determines how easily a user can communicate with the program. A powerful program with a poorly designed UI has little value. Text-based and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that use windows, icons, and pop-up menus have become standard on personal computers. Text-based UIs as well as GUIs typically use an input device, such as a keyboard, mouse or stylus, to provide user input and control the movement of a cursor or pointer on a display screen.
Touch-sensitive surfaces are rapidly becoming more common in computing devices. A natural input device for computing devices with touch-sensitive surfaces is a user's finger. They are very convenient as they allow a user to make natural gestures familiar to the user in other contexts, such as by entering handwriting using a stylus. Many of these devices also allow input to be provided by a user's fingertip. The term touch-sensitive surface or device will be used herein to refer to such surfaces or devices that are configured to detect the touch of any type of “stylus” such as a stylus, stylus type device or a user's finger, fingers, hand or hands.
As portable electronic devices become more compact, and the number of functions performed by a given device increase, it has become a significant challenge to design a user interface that allows users to easily interact with various devices including multifunction devices. This challenge is particularly significant for handheld portable devices, which have much smaller screens than desktop or laptop computers. This situation is unfortunate because the user interface is the gateway through which users receive not only content but also respond to user actions or behaviors, including user attempts to access a device's features, tools, and functions. Some portable communication devices (e.g., PDAs, mobile telephones, sometimes called mobile phones, cell phones, cellular telephones, smart phones, and the like) have resorted to adding more pushbuttons, increasing the density of push buttons, overloading the functions of pushbuttons, or using complex menu systems to allow a user to access, store and manipulate data. These conventional user interfaces often result in complicated key sequences and menu hierarchies that must be memorized and accessed by the user.
Many conventional user interfaces, such as those that include physical pushbuttons, are also inflexible. This may prevent a user interface from being configured and/or adapted by either an application running on the portable device or by users. When coupled with the time consuming requirement to memorize multiple key sequences and menu hierarchies, and the difficulty in activating a desired pushbutton, such inflexibility is frustrating to most users.
To avoid problems associated with pushbuttons and complex menu systems, portable electronic devices may use touch screen displays with simple and intuitive interfaces. Each set of applications may require a specific set of touch commands, however in many cases commands are obvious and require very little or no learning time. Conventional interfaces make some sophisticated software tools unusable by many people not skilled in using high-tech gadgets. Accordingly, there is a need for touch screen display electronic devices with more transparent and intuitive user interfaces. Such interfaces increase the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction with portable multifunction devices. The need to elaborate methods of touch screen device user's gesture recognition and flexible touch commands has been recognized in both industry and academia. Numerous inventions have been reported in that area. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,519,223 “Recognizing gestures and using gestures for interacting with software applications” by Dehlin et al, an interactive display table is described that senses and infers natural hand or finger positions, or movement of an object, to detect gestures. Specific gestures are used to execute applications, carryout functions in an application, create a virtual object, or do other interactions, each of which is associated with a different gesture.
Unfortunately, there are few if any systems applying touch screen technology to important tasks related to processing data records. One important set of applications that could greatly benefit from a new and intuitive interface based on touch screen display technology is analysis of data records and/or files with similar content. For example, medical records which are being currently transferred from paper to electronic format(s). Advancements in online and document tracking technologies (e.g., XML, SGML, etc.) make it possible to standardize medical records. E.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,624,027 “Method and system for automated medical records processing” by Stern et al provides a means for reducing the complexity of collecting patient information and helps to generate the appropriate number and type of medical codes for a specific type of medical process or practice when processed. One embodiment also includes processing applications that allow easy and automated collection, processing, displaying and recording of medical codes (e.g., diagnosis codes, billing codes, insurance codes, etc.), medical records and other medical data. The medical codes, records and data including patient encounter information are displayed in real-time on electronic templates prior to, during or immediately after a patient encounter.
In the United States, the development of standards for Electronic Medical Records (EMR) interoperability is at the forefront of the national health care agenda. EMRs are an important factor in interoperability and sharing data between practicing physicians, pharmacies and hospitals. Many physicians currently have computerized practice management systems that can be used in conjunction with health information exchange (HIE), allowing for first steps in sharing patient information (lab results, public health reporting) which are necessary for timely, patient-centered and portable care. In the United States, approximately one-quarter of office-based physicians reported fully or partially using EMR systems in 2005. A complete EMR system has four basic functions: computerized orders for prescriptions, computerized orders for tests, reporting of test results, and physician notes. During examination of a patient's medical history it is often valuable to examine and compare medical records of relatives because such records may provide additional information related to the patient's medical issue. Therefore, a system, method and computer readable medium facilitating such examination and comparison is needed. With the growing popularity of touch screen technology, it is necessary to deploy such features on computing devices with touch screen interfaces. Ease of use and intuitive interface of touch screen computing devices will make such features popular in the medical field.
What is also needed is an application that can be utilized with a device including a touch screen or display (such as a mobile device or desktop monitor) that allows the user to align data, displayed on a touch screen, according to an identifier or tag associated with one or more data units. The tag could be a time tag, for example, a timestamp relating data units to events that occurred sometime in the past or will occur in the future. Alternatively, the tag could be the distance from a reference point, and it could be associated with data units describing real estate items such as houses, office buildings, data centers, etc. Applications taking advantage of such commands will be described in embodiments below. Some of the applications can be specialized (e.g., in the medical field) and suitable for touch screen devices larger than the ones used in mobile handset devices. In the embodiments below, the benefits of relevant simple and intuitive touch screen commands will be disclosed.
The present invention can be used with various applications. These applications include but are not limited to the analysis of medical reports, displaying numerous historic events, for example, in museums or in schools during history lessons. These applications are given only as examples, and it should be noted that the invented touch screen commands could also be used in other applications such as map applications. Any person skilled in the art will recognize that this invention can be used in many other applications.